Games Thrist News Gamers Thirst For

Battlefield 3′s shaping up to be a must buy title judging from what’s been shown, and indeed tens of thousands have already pre-ordered the game. Although many align the shooter to its closest nemesis, Battlefield 3 is actually a much different game than Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Sure they’re shooters, but two very different ones. Especially in the design and warfare style departments. You can see the games stand in their own respective classes, yet at E3, Battlefield 3 was the clear favorite of the critics. Why? Many reasons, mainly because of its realistic nature, different style of gameplay, and design.

Have a glimpse of the man who leads the latter, and where he gets some of his inspiration from below the break.

His name is David Goldfarb, the lead designer for Battlefield 3 and writer at DICE, and recently on his blog, the developer spoke of his new source of inspiration.

“So I’ve been reading several books about warfighting, which is kinda comical given my occupation as a guy with soft hands who types instead of pulling a trigger. But when you make games, you want to at least steep yourself in as much of the information as you can. It helps you. It inspires you. It can depress you. Mostly, it orients you,” he said.

“Anyway I was struck by a lot of the parallels between “new” principles in warfighting and the “new” methods and processes we’re using to make games. I think we could – and in many cases are- already doing things this way in game development. But there’s a lot to learn!

The old way of waging war was pretty straightforward. You had soldiers. You lined these dudes up and hopefully the weight of numbers and technology fell on your side. You would attrit the enemy down to what became an unsustainable loss position and he’d either retreat, surrender, or be wiped out. It’s not to say that tactics and strategy had no place in this type of warfighting. They simply were aligned to a certain kind of leadership and a certain kind of expectation in battle. Symmetrical forces clashing.”

Goldfarb then ran a parallel between old methodology’s “rigid chain of command” when people had to wait for orders from the higher ups before a decision was made, against the here and now, where at least some form of power must be given to folks at different stages in order to keep up. After all, in a life and death situation, one has no time to consult “leaders”, because at that time, the leader is…..you.

“We are talking about design. We’re talking about some companies I used to work for, companies friends used to work for.. that were hierarchy driven, centralized, slowmoving. Where people would wait for their boss to give them the green light. Where shit could not move ahead unless the big guy gave the thumbs up. Where people had limited if any operational autonomy.”

Adding: “So this is where it gets interesting to me. Maneuver warfare is about decentralizing leadership in order to allow those closest to the battle to operational autonomy to the troops so that they can make tactical decisions themselves instead of waiting on some General in his airconditioned hangar to pass them the word. In the modern day battleground of asymmetrical warfare and instant communication and urbanized regions, the ability to act quickly, decisively, and flexibly has become much more important.”

“The principles of maneuver warfare are fascinating to me. They sound like design principles. They also sound like agile development.

Speed. Concentration. Tempo. Surprise. Momentum. And the ubiquitous enemy of all these things is Friction, which can be loosely summarized as the collection of all things that conspire to f%*$ up an offensive: enemy fire, location, weather, sickness, supply, etc.”

Interesting insights. All David Goldfarb influences are now in EA’s upcoming shooter and so-called Call of Duty killer, Battlefield 3. It’ll release worldwide on October 25th for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.